Tag Archives: Extreme Weather Events

The June 2017 report, Costs of Pollution in Canada: Measuring the impacts on families, businesses and governments reviews and synthesizes existing studies to produce the most comprehensive assessment of pollution and its costs in Canada to date. Some quick facts: the cost of climate change-related heat waves in Canada is estimated to have been $1.6 billion in 2015; Smog alone cost Canadians $36 billion in 2015. But the report also provides detailed estimates, organized in three categories: 1. Direct Welfare Costs: (Harm to health and well-being such as lower enjoyment of life, sickness and premature death); 2. Direct Income Costs – (Direct out of pocket expenses for families (e.g. medications for asthma), businesses (e.g. increased maintenance costs for buildings) and governments (remediation of polluted sites); and 3. Wealth impacts.

Direct Welfare Costs of pollution, the most studied and understood, are estimated as at least $39 billion in 2015, or about $4,300 for a family of four. The Direct Income Costs that could be measured amounted to $3.3 billion in 2015, but the study cautions that this many important costs could not be measured, and full impacts on income were likely in the tens of billions of dollars. In this category, the study estimates Lost Labour Outputs, using a metric derived from the 2016 OECD study, The Economic Consequences of Outdoor Air Pollution. The OECD estimates outdoor air pollution to cost 0.1% of national GDP, which, when applied to Canada’s 2015 GDP of approximately $1,986 billion, implies a costs of about $2 billion in lost labour output alone. And finally, Wealth impacts, or costs on value of assets , are said to be the least understood of pollution costs, about which, “We simply do not know how much pollution costs us in terms of lost wealth”.

A report on May 16 from an agency of the World Bank, the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), says that cities around the world are failing to plan for fast-increasing risks from extreme weather and other hazards, and by 2050, 1.3 billion people and $158 trillion in assets will be threatened by worsening river and coastal floods alone. Losses in 136 coastal cities are projected to rise from $6 billion a year in 2010 to $1 trillion a year by 2070. The report, The Making of a Riskier Future: How Our Decisions are Shaping the Future of Disaster Risk is here ; a summary from Thomson Reuters is here . A separate report, also in May, from Christian Aid, ranks cities with the most to lose from coastal flooding. Topping their list: Calcutta (14 million people), Mumbai (11.4 million) and Dhaka (11.1 million). Miami, with 4.8 million people, ranks 9th in population but tops the ranking by exposed assets in 2070 , with $3.5 trillion. New York City ranks 3rd in exposed assets with $2.1tn. The report also discusses the risks to the city of London, U.K. Read Act Now or Pay Later: Protecting a billion people in climate-threatened coastal cities .

A report by Australia’s Climate Commission, released in March 2013, states that “There is little doubt that over the next few decades changes in extreme events will increase the risks of adverse consequences to human health, agriculture, infrastructure and the environment”, with key food-growing regions across the southeast and the southwest, and cities in the southeast especially at risk. The report calls for deep, immediate cuts to carbon emissions as the only way to reverse the trend. The Climate Commission is an independent advisory group established by the Australian government in 2011 to provide Australians with an independent and reliable source of information about climate change. Read The Critical Decade: Extreme Weather Report at: http://climatecommission.gov.au/report/extreme-weather/.